


they rode through new england with a gun in either hand

by depressionshirt



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Other, john laurens takes on the worlds most dramatic side quest, major character death except not really, strap in this one's emotional, there's a lot of grief i don't know what to tell you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-06-02 16:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19444942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depressionshirt/pseuds/depressionshirt
Summary: Following the battle of Monmouth, John Laurens and some 2,500 men disappear into thin air. As Alexander falls apart following the announcement of John's hanging, the Marquis de Lafayette is forced to clear the wreckage, and Hercules struggles to return from an assignment. Trouble brews in British-controlled New England and George Washington is left to try and fill the space left behind by the missing battalion.





	1. and i guess when i say thank you, i really just mean hello

_Misery._ That was how Alex thought the men might describe the hospital tent. It reeked of blood and alcohol, dead soldiers and men on their way there. Monmouth had been a close call by all accounts and had taken no prisoners, only dead and wounded, leaving the Continentals to bring every salvageable man into the tent and begin operation, or amputation, or whatever the hell was required in the moment. 

John Laurens was _very sure_ he was going to die.  
Bullets weren’t ever meant to enter people skin but John’s shoulder had been bitten by the lead viciously, and now he was praying that the woman above him could extract a bullet more quickly that infection could set in. She was a beefy woman, loud and insistent in all that she did, and clearly had a handle on exactly what to do. He supposed, drifting in and out of consciousness, that it wouldn’t have mattered if she was sloppy anyway. As long as he came out of it alive, he doubted anyone would care what the scar looked like.  
It was a nice thought, but then the woman said something in the heaviest Scottish accent he might have ever heard and wedged a knife between his flesh and the bullet. It took everything John had not to scream, instead biting down on his lip and rolling his head back as though searching for someone standing at the head of the cot. There was no one to receive the agonized look save for soldiers who knew exactly what it meant, and everyone looked away when they cut eyes with the Lieutenant Colonel. If John was struggling, only God knew what was in store for them.  
The sensation when she levered the blade upward was that of being rocked on a ship violently, like his whole body was thrown to the side despite its sedentary state. John yelped, tried to remember that it had been much worse to be shot and this would - should he be right in diagnosing her as competent - be a short encounter. As soon as they were done, they’d let him up, and he could go and find his friends. Could go and show them that he was alright, and of course he was - coming through anything and everything was John’s famous party trick.  
If this had been the end of it, things would have been fine, but nothing ever just _worked_ for the Continentals and Laurens was no exception.  
The woman, who John would later learn was a fishmonger, straightened the knife and dug it a little deeper into the muscle. He didn’t know his spine could flex as far as it did, but when he grabbed at her wrist unthinkingly and let out a ghastly sound, she made a gentle noise in the back of her throat and muttered for him to _‘Calm down, now, Lieutenant Colonel, I’ve got me ‘ands on you.’_ Despite her being a stranger it was helpful, and John took a few deep breaths. He grit his teeth when she went back to work and did what he could to keep his calm for onlookers and those waiting outside.

It had been about thirty minutes when a scream split through the air, and Alexander thought maybe he was going to faint because he stood up very fast and the Marquis forced him back down with equal agility. Given a moment to register, the scream belonged to someone on a different octave than the man he waited ever more impatiently for. The world felt like it rocked beneath him, but he turned his gaze to his companions and all at once things seemed to steady. Seemed to normalize and balance out at an alarmingly peaceful rate. They were just talking, the Marquis and Hercules, exhausted and worn to threads but somehow chugging along like they weren’t waiting to hear if the surgery had been a success. Like there wasn’t one more chair than they needed in the little tent they often shared if this didn’t go the way they planned it to. The small reminder made Alexander’s heart race again, yanked the ground from beneath him, but all at once Lafayette was asking him a question and he was back where he should be. It was so small, but the topic reminded him that he was safe for the moment. They all were.  
“J’ai dit, _‘Do you want any?’”_ The Marquis took a flask from Hercules and offered it to Alex, who took it with well-hidden reluctance. “C’est de l’eau,” the Frenchman added. If it was only water, Alexander’s reservations would be left to the wind. He downed more of it than he thought he would (due in part because Hercules, cheeky bastard he was, reached over and tipped the bottom of the flask upward and Alex had to act fast at the risk of his trousers getting drenched.) The tailor laughed, suggested that perhaps Alexander had acted with too much zeal. He received only a reply of, “Sod off, Mulligan.” They laughed, and invisible in a crowd of a few thousand faces, the night went on.  
Everyone was missing someone, but the quad was notorious. To see one without the other was unheard of, but all four together was akin to a murder of ravens flying morose over a war field. All four together meant disaster, though for who it was never certain. As the battle drew to a close it was almost as though Lafayette had become another man, leading his men through things even Laurens had had trouble navigating with the confidence of something ancient and hardened by the past. It had been the only way to win, per se, to drag on until a stalemate was reached. The harbingers had been riding today, but only one had unleashed its true potential.  
Alex took stock of his friend as he reflected. He found there was no trace of the monster that had led them only hours before. 

The hour encroached on two o’clock by the time that familiar laughter, weak and hoarse but still infectious, made its way out of the haphazard hospital in a fashion that was nothing short of miraculous. John Laurens stumbled out from between the canvas walls with his coat pulled around his shoulders and the scotswoman squinting at his back, calling out something about stitches and how to keep them closed. They would pop at some point, he was sure, but that wasn’t his focus at the moment. His focus laid on the three men rising from the ground like something primal and ethereal, slowly and with a purpose. His focus laid on the way they converged on him and clouded his senses - even the ones pain had a hold of - until all he could do was mutter, "Thank you,” and hope they knew what he meant.  
He had never seen wolves converge on a pack mate coming home, but he knew this to be a homecoming. The moon lit his return and the rest was a hurricane of every familiar thing he’d ever loved, hands that knew his and voices that could only ever heal whatever hurt he brought to them. It made his chest ache. They all understood, he knew, that though he had come through to the other side there were parts of him that were fragile. Like most things, John would be stronger in the broken parts when they healed. This was routine. This was how things worked with the freckled man, and they had become very good at accommodating him through the years. 

Even as he leaned heavily on Hercules, they understood; he muttered, _“Thank you,”_ but they knew he just meant _“Hello.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded [at Brandywine,] he did everything that was necessary to procure one or t'other." Marquis de Lafayette, of John Laurens at the Battle of Brandywine.


	2. to wake alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big Love to my beta reader, arri, and special thanks to kxkka who deserves the world.

Waking to anything other than the sound of gunfire was so surreal, these days.   
Alexander always rose at the crack of dawn, when John would be leaving for drills and the camp was just asleep enough for there not to be a rush to get anywhere. Today was no different, except for the missing presence at his right. John wasn’t there, which made a lick of sense in his sleep-addled state; John was probably just at the hospital tent getting checked out. He’d come back for his things later, and-  
 _His things._ His things, why was that important suddenly? A cursory glance showed that all of John’s extraneous possessions were in place, save for his musket, his pistol, and the rapier he carried as an officer of the Continental Army. His clothes, obviously, had gone with him whenever he left, but if he had taken his weapons, John Laurens was on a head hunt or headed to war. Which was to say John was gone. Which was to say John, who had been shot last night and still looked so fragile when they called it a night, was missing from his place. There was a mad scramble in Alexander’s mind to put the pieces together and form a coherent thought, halfway asleep and squinting in the dim light to find any indication that this wasn't real. As he pulled himself up from the cot's edge he was possessed by a strange calm. Even as part of him freaked out logic stepped in and began to divide and conquer; surely John was just out taking practice shots or doing some new form of drilling he had yet to witness. He had to be somewhere, else he would have taken with him the horrible burgundy coat that hung on the back of his chair. It was so worn that Hercules had mended it more times than anyone cared to count. If memory served, it was a gift to John from his late mother and he just couldn't part with it.

Alex didn't know how long he'd been standing there but as he finally got a grip he turned his head to see the Marquis, leaned up against a post in far too relaxed a position for his taste. Either the American Major General was behind on intelligence or the French Marquis truly didn’t know something was wrong.  
“Forgive me from interrupting your … _intense conversation,_ ” the Marquis quipped bemusedly, motioning to the dirt beneath them, “I just came to check on you.”   
As if it ever meant anything, Alexander motioned to the empty cot in a noncommittal, half-there fashion. _Witness me,_ he seemed to say. Still leaning there like a stupid mannequin, the frenchman followed the line of the movement with his eyes and then looked back up at Alexander with the smallest, most restrained smile that had ever graced the earth. Briefly, Alex felt a mixture of extreme annoyance and unrivaled affection for him. Then it was right back to the nonverbal expression that _someone was missing_ and he ought to _care a little more._  
There was a moment of silence where it seemed that he just basked in the absurdity of the moment, and somehow Alex found it in him to be comfortable. The atmosphere was broken by Lafayette finally crossing his arms and informing him, “He’s with the General. Booted me out on his way in, the nerve of him. Said only that they had some ‘important business’ to discuss.”  
Now, Alexander knew what happened when these sort of things came up, and he didn’t believe it for a second. There was no way in hell the General had plans for John in his state, and Alex thought he really should just pop his friend on the jaw right there for even dropping such a line, but -  
“They roused him early. Washington asked for Laurens alone.”  
His disbelief must have shown in his face, but even so, it subsided some with that assertion. Surely, if the General had called him, it was nothing major. Then again, how early was early? They’d turned in awfully late last night, and their missing companion hadn’t slept well at all from what he’d seen. Pushing the thought aside, Alexander dropped into a chair as though he hadn’t just woken up, yawning and pulling a pen from its inkwell. It took a moment for him to fish a clean paper out of the rubble on his collapsible desk. God knew he was going to have to ask for more soon, and congress would give him hell for it.   
Motion at his back went ignored owing to its nature - The Marquis was a curiously lanky fellow when he wasn’t holding himself like a preening dove and walked, in Alexander’s humble opinion, like man who’d been possessed by the soul of a fish or some animal of that fashion. Like he was being controlled by something that was unaware of anything outside of itself, and Alex took great pleasure in poking fun at him whenever he got the chance. It just wasn’t the time, though. He put pen to paper anxiously in an attempt to come back down to earth from the terrible loop he'd caught himself up in. A few minutes had him absorbed in the work even as possibility after possibility filled his head; John had died, he'd run off somewhere, Washington was sending him home. Maybe he'd contacted gangrene and they were amputating the limb.   
"That would be a very quick spread of infection," The Marquis mused. Alexander had become one for mumbling to himself, talking through things in a habit stolen from his dear Laurens over time. It helped to speed his thoughts along, give him a clearer perception of things as he desperately wrote his country's way out of the war. He had never been totally aware when he started, only when he stopped, because _Marie-Joseph Yves Paul Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette,_ was very perceptive to his war-forged family. He never let anything slide and he never played any games, and while the no-bullshit policy was appreciated it could be so, so annoying.  
Especially when the Marquis was laid out on the cot like that, one leg bent and propped up on his forearm like he _knew some shit._ Like he had ever studied medicine in his life, like he knew anything about gangrene.   
“You, sir,” Alexander informed the frenchman all too calmly, “look like a hedge-creeper with a pence-an-hour fee searching for amorous congress.”   
There wasn’t enough canvas in the world to capture the offense he took, jaw dropped open, or the laughter that nearly tipped Alexander from his chair before Lafayette reached over to knock the Major General out of it himself. Even in that moment of unintentional mania, Alexander found it within himself to be starstruck by his friend. Marie-Joseph was by no means an unattractive fellow despite his awkward height, jaw sharp as a blade and eyes that seemed to look through you, pick out every single one of your sins and turn it over in his hands like he was examining a loaded weapon. He had a certain air to him that Alexander understood to be, objectively, beautiful.   
The moment was lost when the Marquis, still sulking, laid back on the cot and covered his eyes with a forearm. “Hercules is out on assignment, too.”  
Still lying flat on the floor, Alexander responded with a frustrated groan.

In the middle of strategizing almost six hours later, John’s whereabouts once again came into question.   
The General wasn’t there, but then, he had other things to tend to. It was Talmadge and Lafayette and Hamilton in a room with a table and some maps, and it really shouldn’t have been so hard, but a key player was noticeably absent. 

If anyone were to ask Alexander, the whole discussion was really Benjamin’s fault. He had just _had_ to ask. 

“Shouldn’t there be another man in this room?” It was an innocent question, maybe a little accusatory because John had never been the most punctual when it came to actually planning things out, but there was little to no bite to it. Just a little edge.  
The Marquis, who had been moving pegs across the map and picking one up and putting it back down like throwing darts and hoping to find the secret to victory in the puncture wounds they left in the map, opened his mouth to speak. Unfortunately for Talmadge, that fraction of a second would never be fast enough and Lafayette was just going to have to sigh and keep throwing darts at their play-pretend battleground.  
“Shouldn’t we be talking about something more important than missing compatriots? Perhaps, _dare I say,_ what we’re going to do whether we have the Lieutenant Colonel’s assistance or not?” It was a bold move, coming from someone who had nearly cried when he’d come to the same conclusion, but Alexander knew that Benjamin knew that something was happening. All of the aides-de-camp had clearly been made aware of this (save for him, but whatever,) and he had no patience for perceived latency.   
Talmadge bristled, regal but too pretty to be intimidating, and suddenly the Major General was reminded why he didn’t associate peacocks with France.   
“Shouldn’t we be wondering,” he continued, “Why our Marquis has removed _roughly a battalion from our ranks?_ ”  
“Monmouth was a bloodbath,” the young man in front of him defended. “We lost a good few men, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens was nearly one of them. You know yourself the moon saw plenty of blood.”  
Alex could understand this response, the naivety in it, could almost forgive it except he was still a young man himself in the way that he counted faster that any old hound ever could. Across the table, the Marquis rolled his eyes and set his forehead on the mess he’d made without any regard for the ink beneath it.  
“You know, Talmadge, that’s awful funny that you say that, because last night the same moon reminded me of you; prominent but not quite there.” Immediately, the atmosphere seemed to shift. Ben shrunk in on himself like a child in the rain and received no pity, but met the challenge he’d been presented with.  
“We were stuck on the west bank of the river, the horses couldn’t swim it. How was I to know there was a fight, much less that we’d lost a battalion? I should have been there, I’ll grant you, but _I didn’t know.”_

In that one sentence was every single little thing Alexander had been waiting for and then some. He postured, in a way, tipped his head to the left and set his jaw as he cocked a brow. _“Forgive me,”_ the Little Lion hissed, “I must have misheard you. For a second, it seemed as though you meant to tell me we lost _twenty-five hundred men in a single night!”_ His voice rose sharply, almost violent as he brought a hand down flat on the table with a shout from the wood as loud as god’s revolver. There was nothing funny about it, but he laughed anyway, because there was nothing more appropriate that came to mind but to laugh like a crazed man. Again, Talmadge bristled, but Alexander struck him down with a harsh glare as he stalked forward.  
“I can say with an almost overzealous volume of confidence that there were not, and _never will be,_ 2,500 men in that hospital tent. I am _equally sure,_ ” he snapped, keeping Ben on the ropes when he went to speak, “That Lieutenant Colonel Laurens will corroborate with perfect certainty my assumption that you are making a very bold estimate of the wounded within our ranks. So tell me again, Major - we lost _how many men?”_  
When Benjamin said nothing, Alex turned away to meet exhausted eyes that picked him apart no sooner than he’d met them, far too patient and not angry enough to turn that loaded gun on him, to fire his sins like silver bullets at his back. 

Caught in the crossfire, the Marquis only shook his head.


	3. blood in the fog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing in a timely manner? me?
> 
> once again, special thanks to my beta reader arri and big love to kxkka, who deserves the world.

Alexander was so often unaware that time was passing, but as he counted the days following John’s disappearance, it was hard to forget. Everything drew by at a sluggish pace that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around, especially with how quickly the fighting had gone beforehand. In strategizing, Alexander had checked out, and he rode blindly by the Marquis’ orders. It had been a month - an _impossible month_ \- of sleeping alone and waking alone and mentioning John, but never by name. That rocked him a lot, in truth. Laurens had this knack for making himself appear larger than life, loud and unfiltered and every kind of crazy in the best way. If one didn’t know him personally, they knew about him through stories spread through camp by both his men and Alexander’s; John Laurens lived in notoriety. To hear him referred to only as the ‘Missing Lieutenant Colonel’ set Alexander’s teeth on edge. Like he was already gone, confirmed dead. Maybe it was just one more of the things Alexander didn’t know.  
Each day began the same, up before the break of dawn in case something needed addressing because someone had to be referred to in place of John and it was usually him, if not the Marquis. Write until eleven thirty unless duties interrupted his process they were ready to pack up and move the flying camp. Eleven forty-five brought drilling with the men, which often lasted until five or six, and then he had meetings with the Marquis and Talmadge to make certain they were still endeavoring to win this war. These mostly consisted of Lafayette and Benjamin getting on rather well while Alexander made notes on whatever they were doing, except they weren’t on that, they were on the names of men Alexander hadn’t seen in a while. There were 2,500 men missing, and among them were a notable few; John’s left-hand man, a dragoon from John’s black regimen named Adam Sovereign. A trio of brothers from Virginia who were light infantrymen and notorious around the camp. Captain Harrow from South Carolina and a group of his men. The longer Alexander listed men, the more it seemed like there were something going on. If the aides-de-camp were in on this entire mass disappearance, Alexander had been sorely left out of the mix. 

As the camp had begun to move through lower Connecticut, having carved a narrow path through Delaware and New Jersey, they came upon what might have been battlefields. There was blood in the grass, musket balls and the bullets of a Bess settled into the undergrowth with fabric scraps and a bayonet of distinctly English origin. It was odd, sure, but Talmadge speculated that maybe some locals had tried to tell the English to ‘piss off back to their beloved England’ and had paid the ultimate price for the slam. Alexander was inclined to agree, there. The clearing seemed very peaceful now, at any rate, not full of soldiers or rebelling Patriots. The group slogged through easily, down the well-worn path on their way to a better resting place. 

The line of men was called to an abrupt halt.  
Alexander and the Marquis exchanged an unsure look. They each glanced at Ben in turn before they took to either side of the ranks and rode ahead, keeping pace with one another as they kicked up underbrush and surprised the men they rushed past. Alexander, overzealous, nearly barreled into one of the men riding at Washington’s flank. Lafayette, not so quick with a horse as Alexander was, accidentally cantered right into the horror show ahead of them. He didn’t make a sound, just surveyed the field ahead. _Unusual._ Alexander looked to the General, who watched the frenchman with an air of apprehension. Everything was so unsettlingly still; no breeze, no birds calling in the trees around them. As Alex led his horse forward, every step sounded like the beat of a hundred drums. “Lafayette,” he started tentatively. When there was no response his hand found his compatriot’s tall shoulder. The Marquis trembled beneath his steady fingertips and made him frown. “Marie-Joseph, what-“  
“Something terrible has happened here,” the frenchman interrupted. His eyes dragged across the scene that lay ahead and met Alexander’s in a ghostly fashion, like he were seeing something far away and distorted. Anything that could steal away that sharp and observant gleam must be disastrous, Alexander thought, but even that didn’t prepare him for it. 

Stretched out before them was maybe a couple miles of clearing, some of it unnatural as evidenced by the stumps that dotted the western end of it. Dotting the field were flashes of bright red and rusty, brown-scarlet smattered white - corpses. His lip curled in disgust at the smell that hit him on the wind and he wondered, just for a moment, how his companion was holding up so well. Across the field, standing on a pike at the side of the road, was a scarecrow that someone had dressed in the imperial regalia. That, too, was soaked through with blood.  
Alexander turned and rode back to his men, brought them forward out of the linear ranks and instructed them to begin looking for any living men still taking refuge in the tree line. He moved through the middle of the field, just slightly ahead of the spaced out line of men slowly combing with him. He thought he heard O’Leary say something along the lines of, _“Animals, them.”_ He wasn’t sure.  
It felt like there was a body every ten or so feet, splayed out on the grass. Each one had its throat slit in a diagonal line that leaked red-black blood in rainfall lines to the dirt below. All of it was dried by now, the exposed skin covered in a sickly sheen and lips and limbs blue. Blowflies buzzed about each soldier’s visage and gave them a hellish, demon-like quality. In any other situation, Alexander might have said they looked rather like they might come back to life and tell them all what had happened. Wouldn’t that be a sight.  
As he came to the end of the field he found a body that had been freed of any burden above the shoulders, which was to say it was missing any semblance of a head. The spine stuck out just so from the meaty neck that it had previously belonged to. The head was nowhere near the body, seemingly taken as whoever had done this moved along, but something wasn’t right about it. Something felt, distinctly, _wrong._  
Just ten feet away was the scarecrow, and it made Alexander gag when its specifics dawned upon him. The head of the scarecrow, which he had thought to be cattleskin, had been what spilled the blood soaking the shoulders of the thing. A worm crawled from the lips of it and began to chew at the flesh again, forcing his gaze downward to the thatch-stuffed coat because it was all too much. O’Leary’s horse, a roan mare, trotted up to stand at his left side. “Animals, they are,” he repeated.

Alexander only nodded. _Animals, indeed._

The men were pulled back and re-settled in the ranks when it was determined that there was no current threat. The Marquis, still thrown from a loop, took his place at Alexander’s side in a childlike fashion as he seeked some kind of comfort in the face of such violence. The toe of his shoe bumped his ankle every so often as they picked their way through the bodies delicately; whoever had done this had no mercy, and took no prisoners. Who would leave such a brutal scar in their wake?

On the road, just past the scarecrow, they found naught but a black riding cloak.


	4. all their words for glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> as always, big love to my beta reader, arri.

John Laurens didn’t like being gone anymore than the fold liked to lose him, but when the General of the entire Continental Army told you to “move ahead with extreme prejudice,” you went.  
The Lieutenant Colonel had first told the men dress plainly, not in regalia like usual, but that they ought to bring their blue coats should they run across allies. Each man was to leave before three o’clock in the morning to a predetermined point. John would follow suit around four, and from there they moved about ten miles North of the flying camp. Every man donned a pitch riding cloak in the early morning fog (and bitched about humidity quietly. They knew John didn’t mind, but better to let him think they were fine; he never did leave a man to want if he could remedy an issue.)  
The battalion loaded their pistols full to bursting. John made a short, honest moment of the briefing, just told his troops, _“We shall ride in fire today, gentlemen. Our bite must be fiercer than our bark, aims true and lethal. George Washington has entrusted us with the task of driving Tory militia and British patrols out of our colonies and right into hell. May God be at our side, and may the bridges we burn light the path ahead.”_  
From there, the Ride of the Black Curtains began.

Passing through Delaware was blissfully uneventful. Their group, around 300 strong, split themselves into six groups of 48 men, give or take a few. All of the five had a head man, who claimed to be the head of a Quaker congregation leading his flock north to a funeral where they all would reconvene on the southern border of Connecticut. Only the last detachment met any major resistance, presenting papers that they oughtn’t have, and two men were killed. Later that same week, intelligence from Major Talmadge’s ring would present a clipping from the paper and a note that read;

_“Continental spies mix into Quaker delegation, killed this Tuesday.”_

The article spoke of Delaware authorities putting the discovered men to death; the rest were forced to move on in the wake of tragedy. Distant though they were, John and his men mourned. Washington swore profusely, but would tell a rather surprised Marquis de Lafayette nothing of the event.  
The detachment met its first adversaries on the Connecticut line and chased them back a few miles before the men finally put them down. John, cloak spotted with russet drops, dismounted his horse. His men followed suit, checking for anyone still breathing - John Laurens could be an extremely efficient killer, but he wasn’t so cruel as to let a man bleed out in the heat.  
Any man found alive received a deep, diagonal slice to the throat from from just below the ear to the collarbone, and maybe it was large but it was quick because of it. The final redcoat swore at the man who killed him, a slur that just set the infantryman off, and he cut a bit too harshly. It was, in no way, clean, but the man’s head was off. One of his fellows winced, called John over. He came bounding forth with his hair hanging over his shoulders (he was sorely missing having twine to pull it back with) to deal with the matter, awfully quick on his feet. He looked between the two of them for an explanation as to the headless man.  
“I-I didn’t mean to go so far, Lieutenant Colonel. He cussed at me and I just - saw red,” the first man explained. John seemed to mull this over, tipping his head to the side. The second man watched him confidently, both of them nervous inwardly.  
John understood the throes of war. He knew what happened when you got into it and someone called you something you didn’t like. The short man had been in fights left and right over it.  
“I don’t ever want to see it again,” came the level reply. “This is absolutely _inexcusable_ … but I’ll let it slide, this once.” He tucked his hair behind his ear and gave the body a long hard look, almost morose. Someone loved this person. He was about to say they ought to bury the head when the second man spoke up.  
“We shouldn’t waste it,” he suggested.  
“What do you recommend, Mr. Worley?”  
Again, John waited for an explanation. Worley picked up the head by the hair, held it so that it took the place of the pumpkin face rotting on a scarecrow at the end of the field. John gave pause, then nodded. It made his stomach turn, just a little, but it would serve a purpose.  
“So long as it is respectfully carried out.”  
“Yessir.”  
As the freckle-and-blood-smattered man made his way back to a large, dappled horse, he ordered his men back onto their mounts to carry on. Dutifully, the two men went to work. Once every man was back on their horse, the Ride began again. Or it almost did - one of the men brushed the scarecrow too close and gave himself a nice coat of ruby. He made an alarmed sound at the back of his throat and ripped the dark fabric from himself without thought. With the Lieutenant Colonel so far up his counterpart simply told him to _leave it, here’s a spare._ The bared man did as instructed and left it to flutter like a lame crow to the side of the roadway and drew the spare tight around himself.  
“Won’t ever mean nothing to nobody,” the soldier assured him. He reasoned that yes, someone might simply assume it had been English, but stranger things had happened. 

A few days later, several cities north, the Black Curtains rode through a barrack town. They took no prisoners and showed no mirth in their task, leaving only townsfolk in their wake. “Our battle is not with you,” John told the magistrate as he cowered on the steeple steps. Surely, a cloaked man dressed only in black was unnerving. He didn’t pause. “The Black Curtains are only looking to rid this land of military presence.”  
Surrounded on all sides by the men in black cloaks, the Magistrate shook the Lieutenant Colonel’s hand. They left the town none the wiser as to their rebel allegiance and the identities they wore, drawing the Curtain tighter around New England. 

As the trail of devastation began, trouble arose in the flying camp through the most unusual channels.


End file.
